


This Peppermint Winter

by criacuervos



Series: pía's schrödinger hdm fix-it [1]
Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Christmas, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, but also the books because we don't have seasons 2 and 3 yet, i haven't read The Secret Commonwealth - Freeform, mainly following the show, minor Tony/Lyra because i am trash, post-The Amber Spyglass Christmas Special, title from an owl city song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/criacuervos/pseuds/criacuervos
Summary: Right now, Jordan College was getting ready for the Christmas Eve banquet and Lyra hadn’t gone down to the kitchens to look and steal some of the fruit cake or take a bite off the gingerbread. She hadn’t gone down to the kitchens, period. Not because she hadn’t been invited, she didn’t need to be invited, but that was precisely it. Roger hadn’t come to tell her what desserts they were perfecting for the 24th and he hadn’t brought her a handful of marshmallows.Roger wouldn’t come.
Relationships: Lyra Belacqua & Everyone, Lyra Belacqua & Roger Parslow
Series: pía's schrödinger hdm fix-it [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684564
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	This Peppermint Winter

**Author's Note:**

> After the season 1 finale we all needed some comfort... so here. Warning to the people who haven't read the books because there's spoilers for The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. All romance can be left to interpretation. Also, yes, I am aware Alice is supposed to be Roger's cousin but I don't care this is my city, my rules.

There was a banquet to be held on Christmas Eve, so the staff was bustling with activity preparing for it. Various pine trees had been carried into Jordan College to be set around strategic places and decorated, all in the same goldens and silvers and reds and greens as the garlands and globes hangings from the thresholds and walls and ceilings. It was better if everything could get done before the first snow came in, which hadn’t yet arrived but no one was willing to jinx it and comment on it out loud.

Lyra was home — home at Jordan’s — from boarding school for the holidays.

Even if she had been coming on the weekends since starting in St. Sophia’s, it was comforting to stay more than two days. The old creaking bed and the sheets were the same, but the walls had a new coat of paint Lyra got done one of those weekends she was staying over. The new turquoise colour covered the map of the North Lyra had fashioned on the old peeling coat. The letters and newspaper clippings of Asriel were taken down, though not thrown away and Lyra hid them in a drawer. Switched them up for a cheat sheet she had done of all the alethiometer symbols, a crude drawing of Iorek Byrnison, and a newspaper header about Dame Hannah — Lyra’s tutor at St. Sophia’s —. She looked at the unmarred turquoise and wondered what she could draw right on top of it. Another map to the North?

“The Northern Lights,” said Pantalaimon, standing on his hindpaws on the bed as Lyra put a drawing of an air balloon right under Iorek’s.

That was going to be their next project.

Once the drawing of the balloon was in place, Lyra flopped down on the bed next to Pantalaimon. He put his chin on her stomach.

“We should hang Christmas decorations,” said Lyra. “Maybe that’s why it doesn’t feel like Christmas.”

Nevermind that almost every inch of Jordan College sparkled like a snow globe, sans the snow. Lyra knew why it didn’t feel like Christmas, but she _needed_ this joy of the holidays. Something happy. Being at Jordan College always brought her solace from the, so far, lonely experience at St. Sophia’s among the daughters of aristocrats who hadn’t been half-taught all their lives, who knew what the third fork was for and said “beg pardon” instead of “sorry”… but right now.

Right now, Jordan College was getting ready for the Christmas Eve banquet and Lyra hadn’t gone down to the kitchens to look and steal some of the fruit cake or take a bite off the gingerbread. She hadn’t gone down to the kitchens, period. Not because she hadn’t been invited, she didn’t need to be invited, but that was precisely it. Roger hadn’t come to tell her what desserts they were perfecting for the 24th and he hadn’t brought her a handful of marshmallows.

Roger wouldn’t come.

* * *

 _My dear Lyra,_

_I decided to send this early for fear it might get lost in the haul of letters on Christmas day, but please consider it a Christmas letter._

_T_ _ake advantage of the winter break to study the alethiometry book you took from St. Sophia_ ' _s library. It will do wonders to the progress of relearning the process of reading in the long run if you start memorising the meanings now, or at least adding more meanings to your set of notes. We are still only working with the first twenty meanings of the first eight symbols, so don’t overwork yourself. I would prefer you perfectly learned those eight first than jumble it all together. This is going to be a slow process, I want to reiterate that, and you must be willing and ready to take it slow and with patience._

_But anyway, I did not write to you to talk about school work. That we can leave that for when classes resume in January. Snow is already falling in Northern Anglia, which hasn't been kind to my arthritis but makes for quite a view. My oldest niece took some photos of the estate grounds that I have included along with the letter if you want to take a look. It’s been a couple of years since I last spent the holidays with both of my siblings and my sister’s family, seeing as my brother isn’t married and has no kids like myself. Have to admit I was ready to just stay in Oxford and take the Master of Jordan on his invitation to the Christmas Eve banquet I know is hosted every year. I am not one for sentimentalities but Christmas always manages to make me smile, especially with my nieces running around with their gifts. Maybe I could convince you to come with me to the Relf Estate sometime in the future, I think you would like the open space and the wooden floors to slide down on your socks (something even I did as a kid)._

_How are things in Oxford, Lyra? Has snow started to fall yet? I might be back before classes resume, so I'll_ _try to pay Jordan College a visit or you can come to visit me._

_With kind regards,_

_Hannah Relf (Jesper)_

* * *

“Three main meanings of Alpha & Omega,” said Pantalaimon.

Lyra wrote _A_ and _Ω_ on a spare paper, going out of her way of styling them. She’d been doodling all thirty-six symbols of the alethiometer as a way to help her memorising. Some weren’t very good, but she just used that as an incentive to doodle them again when she and Pantalaimon revised again. The first eight symbols had been doodled the most because those were the ones Dame Hannah had left as homework, but she had still gotten all the way to the Cornucopia.

“That’s finality, process and inevitability.”

“Perfect.”

Pantalaimon was on the bed, book open in front of him. Lyra sat at the little rickety desk with one leg shorter than the others that she had to prop with coins, doodling away on the backs of old homework assignments. The little radio that accompanied her now she had snagged from an office one of the resident scholars left open. No one had come asking for it so she assumed it wasn’t that valuable to the owner. It was an old thing with turning dials and stained fabric that covered the speaker. Sometimes it crackled and made the Christmas carols playing in quiet volume go completely silent or sound haunted for a fraction of a second. Those carols were step one on Lyra’s attempt of Christmas-ing her room, next step was finding spare decorations to hang around.

“Three main meanings of the Marionette.”

“Obedience, submission and grace.”

“You’re getting really good at remembering.”

Lyra grabbed her marionette doodle, she had gone with the creepy vibe with this one. Seeing as Lyra wasn’t the best drawer it really did look creepy.

She smiled. “Look, Pan. What do you think?”

“I think we should burn that one before going to bed tonight.”

“That’s mean.”

“You wanted to make it creepy.”

“Still mean.”

“Tell me the main meanings of the Serpent.”

Lyra opened her mouth but closed it when there was a knock at the door.

The Librarian appeared at the top of the stairs, crested gecko-dæmon on his shoulder. “Hello, Lyra. Mind if I come in?”

“Uh, no.” Lyra put some books on top of her doodles and turned on her chair to look at the Librarian proper.

To go with the festivities, the robe he wore had a checkered pattern. He was careful when walking into the room proper, a little meek, but Serena moved from side to side with easy joy.

“Hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“I was just revising.”

“Ah, yes.” The Librarian looked at the book of symbols in front of Pantalaimon. “Yes, that’s good. Dame Hannah expressed her hopes on you continuing to study during the winter break. How is it going?”

“Alright.”

“Think you could afford a break? We would like if you joined us for some tea.”

“You and Serena?”

“Yes, and also the Master.”

“Oh.” Lyra turned the dial of the old radio, turning it off. The Librarian looked at the radio like if he recognised it but said nothing. “Yeah, okay.”

Pantalaimon jumped down from the bed to follow at Lyra’s heels.

She grabbed a coat because it was cold on the open hallways of Jordan College, then did a little skip-and-trot to catch up with the Librarian who was leaving the room. Ever since coming back from another world, returning home, Lyra started to appreciate some things and started to see other things in a different light. The staff at Jordan College wasn’t much of a nuisance anymore with their rules and telling her what to do, instead Lyra saw it for the _concern_ it was — at least in some of them, others were still her sworn rivals no matter what. The Librarian and the Master, when compared to how her experience with her real mother and father had been, stroke more of a resemblance to Ma Costa or Lee Scoresby. She would consider them as part of her mismatched family with pieces scattered everywhere.

The Master’s quarters had all the windows closed and a fire in the hearth, so it was very warm.

Alicia, the Master’s raven-dæmon, was the first to see them. Her feathers bristled and if ravens could smile she would be smiling.

Lyra left her coat on a nearby hanger. “Hello, Master,” she said with practised politeness.

“Hello, Lyra,” said The Master, sitting at his usual armchair by the fire. Alicia was perched on the tall back.

There was a tray already on the little table in front of the fireplace. A steel teapot with a curly handle, two teacups that matched the set and a third one that looked more like ceramic and was definitely for Lyra — if the little purple flowers painted just below the rim were anything to go by. Lyra wouldn’t have chosen that teacup for herself but she liked the sentiment. The experience with her mother might have been a bad one but it at least taught Lyra she also sometimes enjoyed _pretty_ things, like that teacup with flowers.

The Librarian sat on the armchair opposite to the Master and Lyra took a seat on a cushioned chair that had been set right across from the fireplace. Someone hung a string of holly on the edge of the mantle. The decorative candles the Master seemed to have everywhere had been replaced for green and red. That appeared to be the extent of Christmas touches in the Master’s quarters.

“So, Lyra,” said the Master once he had served the tea and handed her and the Librarian their cups. “How is St. Sophia’s treating you?”

Pantalaimon had climbed to her lap to curl up.

“It’s alright. Dame Hannah is really nice.”

“How are you liking your classes?” asked the Librarian, Serena was perched on the armrest closer to the fireplace.

Lyra had a lot to say about her classes. How hard they were. How out of her element she felt. How her classmates were either too mean or so nice it almost felt like pity. When she had to make friends they had always been kids from the working class and the likes. Lyra wasn’t really from that social class but her lord father and political mother hadn’t exactly raised her. These aristocratic girls were almost like a whole new species. They weren’t gyptian girls. They weren’t kids trying to murder her on the streets of another world. They weren’t girls who had been locked up in an experimental facility up north for months. They wrote in cursive and had perfect grammar. They knew how to solve divisions of more than three digits and knew what rhetoric figures in a poem were. They looked at Lyra when she made a mistake, when she answered the teacher’s question wrong. She told some of her classmates that she would write during the holidays but she had no intention to do so.

“Not as much as I like your classes, Librarian,” Lyra said.

The Librarian smiled, then leaned slightly sideways on his armchair. “She was studying when I went to fetch her, Master.”

Lyra sat straighter. “I want to be able to read the alethiometer again as soon as possible."

The Master smiled. It was a smile full of endearment for her like the one of the Librarian, though the Master always managed to make himself look tired. This time was no different. “Just remember what Dame Hannah said, it’s going to take years of intense studying for you to be able to read it the same way as you did.”

Lyra nodded. That was hard to admit. She sometimes held the alethiometer not to make a reading or anything, just because the weight reminded her of when she could read it without the books and her notes. Other times it was too painful of a memory, the way it had been stripped away from her, so she only ever took it out when she had tutoring with Dame Hannah.

“Yeah, I know.”

She lifted the teacup to drink but left one arm resting on her lap so Pantalaimon could put his muzzle on her wrist, some comfort.

The Master cleared his throat but it took a squawk from Alicia for Lyra to look back up. He was holding a square box with a blue ribbon, a note dangling over the side said _For Lyra_ on the Master’s elegant handwriting.

Pantalaimon raised his head from Lyra’s wrist, ears perked forward.

“What’s this?” Lyra asked as she grabbed the box carefully with both hands. It was heavy.

“Christmas gift,” said the Master. “Be careful, it’s fragile.”

This was a novelty. Not because Lyra had never been given gifts on Christmas but because none had ever been as nicely wrapped. Usually the Master or the Librarian would find her in the hallway after Christmas day and give her and unwrapped trinket with a “Happy Christmas, child” and then they would both go on on their ways. The nicest gifts she had ever gotten were from Lord Asriel, and they were usually jewellery. Lyra had to get her ears pierced when she was nine because her father — then “uncle” — had sent her some small golden hoops. Now she rarely wore earrings, mostly because she couldn’t remember where she put Lord Asriel’s gifts. Her prettiest dresses had also been gifts from Lord Asriel, though they were always either too small or too big.

“What is it?” Lyra went to open it.

“It’s a _Christmas_ gift,” the Librarian emphasised, he was smiling. Serena had climbed to his hand. “You’ll have to wait until Christmas to open it.

Lyra pulled on the ribbon to make it look pretty again. She nodded.

* * *

 _O Come O Come Emmanuel_ played on the little radio. Lyra had gone to bed early last night so she was up early this morning, she’d had her breakfast delivered by a kitchen boy she didn’t strike any conversation with, and then went off in the look for spare decorations to hang in her room. She filled a cardboard box with garlands, glass globes, fake holly, and even some fairy lights. It took Lyra most of the remaining of the morning and the beginning of the afternoon to put everything in place. After arriving with all the decorations she had to leave again to go get thumbtacks and nails and a hammer to actually _hang_ them on the door and the wall and the cold fireplace she filled books. Once everything was up, she realised the wire of the fairy lights didn’t reach the outlet… so she had to go out yet again to get an extension to make it reach.

“Ah, Lyra!” said a young man of the cleaning staff (Alex, Lyra thought was his name. His dæmon was a vole).

“Do you know where I can get a wire extension?” Lyra asked before he could say anything else.

“They have all the wires in the dining hall, putting up the decorations for the banquet.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“There are some trees around the College that still need decorating, fancy helping us?”

Lyra paused, considered. “‘Kay, but first I gotta finish with my room.”

“Alright, any of the trees should be easy to find if you run around.”

They nodded and went their separate ways.

In the dining hall there were ladders upon ladders with the staff clamoured atop of them, arms full of glittery decorations to hang above and below the windows. The big crystal orb with its four smaller companions hadn’t been hooked to the ceiling yet and instead they were inside big crates filled with hay pushed to the side. The staff tried to make her stay to help with the absurd amount of decorations but Lyra repeated over and over she only needed a wire extension long enough to link her newly acquired fairy lights to the outlet. She took one she was sure was long enough without asking because no one was listening — too busy holding ladders steady and not falling from said ladders.

So, she went back and connected the fairy lights. Once they were lit, she closed the window and smiled at the sight. The softness of it and the way it softened everything in return, the edges of everything in her room and the other decorations. The way it reflected off the metallic paper of the garlands and the glass globes.

“I like it,” said Pantalaimon, standing on the desk. Beside the books on symbology and the doodles.

“Me too.”

When Lyra found one of the smaller Christmas trees in need of decorating scattered around Jordan College and was given the duty of holding the fairy lights while one of the cleaning girls wrapped them around the tree, a thought hit her. Nothing really triggered it, nothing that she could see. (Really it was the cat-dæmon of one of the other girls helping, though he was a skinny siamese and not a massive grey-scaled tabby). Lyra wondered if Christmas was like this in Will’s world.

Like with Roger, she had been trying _so hard_ not to think of Will. Thinking of not thinking. Making it conscious instead of unconscious was harder. There was a myriad of things keeping Lyra up at night when there was nothing at all she could do to distract herself, other than her fear of getting another nightmare.

The weigh of realisation and of truth and knowing she would never see Will again featured in that myriad of things, it was one of the most concrete that she name.

She wondered if they also decorated their trees, if he managed to go home to his mother and if they would be exchanging gifts on Christmas. She wondered if the carols they listened to on the radio were any different to the carols she listened to. If they called fairy lights something different. She wanted to ask him. She wanted to invite him to the banquet. She wanted someone to talk to who would understand what they had been through. Pantalaimon was there but— Lyra could feel a tug somewhere in her ribcage whenever they got close to the talk about the Land of the Dead. He was still a little angry, resentful, wounded. It wasn’t something she could talk out with him because she didn’t want Pantalaimon to leave her (because now, he could).

“We can ask him on midsummer day,” said Pantalaimon, resting on her shoulders to speak right to her ear while Lyra climbed on the short ladder to hang some glass globes.

“Right,” said Lyra. She didn’t sound very convinced, because she wasn’t.

Midsummer day had been her idea but even if she spoke in the Botanic Garden, Will would not answer.

“How does it look?” Lyra asked the other girls.

“Looks great!” said the one with the siamese-dæmon, her name was Regina. “Mind putting the star on top?”

Another girl handed Lyra a spray-painted golden star made with wire. Lyra climbed to the very top of the ladder, stood on her tiptoes, put the star in place.

The girls did some quiet cheers, happy they were done. Lyra hopped down from the ladder.

* * *

In the kitchens, everyone was busy. The Christmas Eve banquet at Jordan College was approaching, and, while decorating the place was priority, it wasn’t as _top priority_ as the food. It was a _banquet_ after all.

No one paid attention to Lyra standing to the side, Pantalaimon wrapped around her ankles. She watched the organised chaos reign. At first glance, it was mayhem with people going this way and that way with trays and bowls and sharp knives but once you took the time to really _look_ it was clearly all choreographed for efficiency. The chef barked others that were repeated by her macaw-dæmon sitting on top of her head.

Lyra didn’t look to be noticed. She didn’t even know why she was here.

Well, she did know… but she also knew it was futile.

Lyra wanted hot cocoa. But not just any hot cocoa, the hot cocoa Roger would make around this time of year with the cinnamon and cream and the marshmallows and— There would be none of Roger’s hot cocoa. It was a no brainer to ask another cook to do it for her, or even do it herself, but it just wouldn’t be the same. Even if they imitated, no one would make Roger’s hot cocoa.

She left through the side door, walking out to the closest courtyard.

The grass was in that weird state where it wasn’t exactly green but it wasn’t brown either. There still wasn’t any snow so the only winter thing about the weather was the cold that had Lyra hugging her coat tighter. Pantalaimon risked going a little too far with no one around to eavesdrop.

The sadness that settled inside of Lyra was of that now familiar increasing realisation, of reality settling in. She wanted someone to talk to but that someone wasn’t here and wouldn’t be here again. She wanted someone to talk about that grief, but the someone she wanted to talk to was the someone she was grieving or missing or both. It spiralled. As the months passed, Lyra kept thinking that maybe she should be better now but she still wasn’t. The roofs of Jordan didn’t bring her the same sort of escape they once did, they were just a reminder. She had gone down to the catacombs, sat inside one of the open stone coffins, with the bare bones of an old Master, drank some more wine and got so terribly drunk she didn’t go back to her room to sleep that night. Her only real distraction was relearning to read the alethiometer, the promise of that comfort she had known, of something familiar. Lyra couldn’t talk to Roger about her snobby classmates so they could make fun of them together. Lyra-and-Roger, best friends and inseparable… until she led him right to his death.

Lyra wiped her face with the sleeve of her coat, sniffling. She and Pantalaimon had walked aimlessly under arches connecting the courtyards until they ended up in one that was usually quite pretty with its flowers and fruit trees during the warmer seasons but was now just bare branches and bare shrubs.

“A gravestone would look nice here,” said Pantalaimon.

The thought had been on the back of Lyra’s mind: a gravestone for Roger Parslow here in Jordan College. He deserved a gravestone, even if just an honorary one (while his body was buried in the snow of Svalbard).

“There.” Pantalaimon bounded over to stand underneath what Lyra was sure was a pear tree. “It could go here.”

“We’ll tell the Master, Roger _needs_ to have a gravestone.”

He couldn’t go in the catacombs, he’d always been afraid of them so his ghost would probably be too.

“What are you doing out here in the cold?”

Lyra would know that voice anywhere. Mrs. Lonsdale seemed to have appeared out of nowhere and she carried with her a basket full of clothes and trinkets that clinked against one another when she moved. Her dæmon, a retriever, trailed dutifully after her. She wasn’t wearing her housekeeper uniform and instead wore a bonnet and a thick cloak to fight the winter chill.

“Looking for a place to put a gravestone?” Mrs. Lonsdale continued as she approached Lyra, stopping beside her with the basket propped on her hip. She was young but a little worn as if from her years of work, skinny, but with a pretty face and bob-cut hair and a particular spray of freckles on her face that was almost childish and had survived into adulthood. “I have to agree with your dæmon, underneath the tree would be very nice.”

Without really intending to, Lyra glanced at the contents of the basket. They were perfectly visible, mind you, so it wasn’t really snooping.

“Those are Roger’s things,” Lyra blurt out, almost accusingly.

Mrs. Lonsdale looked at Lyra and then at the basket. Suddenly, she seemed even more tired. “They are, yes.”

“Why do you have Roger’s things?”

“I’m taking them home.”

“Why?”

“Because they were going to throw them away if I didn’t.”

“But why did they give them to you?”

The expression on Mrs. Lonsdale’s face was now somewhere between insulted and amused. “ _Because_ by the time of Roger’s death, I was his legal guardian.”

Lyra paused. She had completely forgotten Mrs. Lonsdale was _the aunt_ Roger always went on about, the one who got him the kitchen boy job at Jordan: Alice Lonsdale. The particular spray of freckles and the light coloured eyes were just like Roger’s, so much Lyra would even go as far as calling them Parslow Traits.

“Oh,” Lyra said lamely.

Mrs. Lonsdale smiled. “Why don’t you come with me and we can go through them together? I’m headed home for the day. We’ll catch a cab and be there in no time.”

Somehow, it surprised Lyra more that Mrs. Lonsdale didn’t actually live at Jordan College than anything else. Though, again, as she remembered, Roger did leave for a couple of days (usually a weekend) after Christmas to spend them outside the college. It just hadn’t occurred to Lyra where he might be going. Maybe he’d told her but she hadn’t really been listening, that tendency to be so self-absorbed was something she’d been working on since coming back.

Lyra nodded.

* * *

The house was near the canal, not too far from where Dame Hannah lived. It was a quaint little place that was a little too dusty. Mrs. Lonsdale said she much preferred her parlor at Jordan to the house but that she kept it mostly as sentimentality for her late husband. Couldn’t bring herself to sell it. There were pictures hanging on the wall of a man with a burrowing owl-dæmon and a younger Mrs. Lonsdale. There were even some pictures of Roger, though very few. Mrs. Lonsdale opened all the windows to ventilate but was quick to shut them again once that was done to keep the chill out.

Lyra hung her coat on a rack by the door. It was richly carved and Mrs. Lonsdale told her that her husband had made it himself, apparently he had been a carpenter.

“Would you like something warm to drink?” Mrs. Lonsdale asked once she’d put some kindle and wood into the iron stove to warm up the living room.

“I’m okay,” said Lyra.

“Sure? I make some killer hot cocoa.”

Lyra didn’t know what compelled her to nod, but she did.

While Mrs. Lonsdale got the kettle, Lyra put the basket on the little coffee table to begin rummaging through it. Most of it was just clothes. The Jordan College staff uniform with the vest and the pants and even the shiny shoes. Everything else was second-hand, like all Lyra owned other than what Lord Asriel had gifted her. Pantalaimon climbed to her shoulders to look alongside her. There weren’t many trinkets. There was a box for smokeleaf but it was filled with spare buttons, a little pouch with loose change, a comb, a stuffed animal that looked vaguely like both a cat and a bear. Maybe the spare buttons were to replace the eyes whenever they fell, because the current ones were mismatched. There was a very good drawn portrait of a man and a woman with their dæmons also in frame even if the drawings were more like busts — his dæmon was a sort of beetle that had been enlarged for the drawing and her dæmon was a saluki dog.

“Here you go, Lyra.”

Mrs. Lonsdale handed her a steaming ceramic mug with a pattern of bright coloured swirls. Lyra put the picture on her lap and grabbed the mug with both hands.

“Careful, it’s hot.” Mrs. Lonsdale sat next to Lyra on the sofa, her dæmon settling at her feet on the floor. “Those are my brother and sister-in-law.”

“Roger’s parents.”

Mrs. Lonsdale nodded. “Yeah.”

“What happened to them?”

“To my brother, it was a railroad accident. And to her—” Mrs. Lonsdale pointed to Roger’s mother. “It was illness, post-partum depression.”

Lyra didn’t know what that was exactly, but it didn’t sound good. She didn’t ask, just looked at the portrait again. They looked very young in the picture.

“Roger was very little when each of them died, I think he’d only managed to say his first words when Susanne—” Mrs. Lonsdale cut herself off. Whatever the post-partum depression had done to Susanne Parslow it didn’t seem to have been pretty, or the kind of thing you discuss with a nearly fourteen-year-old. “I took him in when he was around five? I was already married and my parents were elderly, so I took the responsibility upon myself when Daniel died in the accident... then another accident, different kind, took my husband by the end of that same year. It was hard for me, all alone and with a baby and no reliable income. I used to wash dishes at a restaurant not far from here, the Trout, maybe you’ve heard of it. I assume Malcolm mentions it often during his classes at Jordan College. Brenda, his mother, was a great help.”

Professor Polstead? Lyra wanted to ask but Mrs. Lonsdale kept talking so she saved the question for later.

“The Master at Jordan offered me to work as his housekeeper when Roger was about six or seven, so we both moved to Jordan.” Mrs. Lonsdale chuckled, grabbing the vest of the staff, holding it clutch between shaking fingers. She didn't want Lyra to see her shaking. "He said you were becoming a lot to handle and they couldn't find a suitable nanny, so when he heard I was looking for both a job and a place to leave he offered me to stay permanently. Given that I could find a way to... educate you."

And she pinched Lyra's cheek but it was superficial. Didn't hurt.

Lyra smiled. So, she had been around six when she met Roger. It was nice to clear that up, they’d always debated about it but no one was really sure.

“When he turned eleven the Master said Roger could work as a kitchen boy, that it’d double our income so I accepted. The rest is history.” Mrs. Losndale smiled at Lyra. “You took an immediate liking to him, I remember. Never a dull moment with you two. Your wild ideas managed to corrupt him, even if just a little. He is still mostly a meek boy.” She looked at the basket, at the things still left inside. “Or… he was.”

There was a pause and from somewhere in the house a clock marked the hour.

“I think you can drink the cocoa now, Lyra.”

Lyra started. Right, she forgot she was holding the mug. She lifted it, still using both hands because it was quite a wide mug, and drank. It was cooler now and Lyra paused with just the tiniest sip inside her mouth. Cinnamon and cream. This was _Roger_ _’s_ hot cocoa, exactly the same save for the missing marshmallows but maybe Mrs. Lonsdale didn’t have any marshmallows. Lyra lowered the mug again when her hands began to shake and her eyesight blurred with tears. She quickly put the mug on the little coffee table before she dropped it accidentally.

“Oh, my dear. We don’t have to talk about Roger if you don’t want to.”

Lyra shook her head, but not because of that. After hiccuping a few sobs, she managed to say, “The cocoa.”

“What about it?”

“It’s just like Roger’s.”

His aunt had taught him how to do it. Lyra didn’t _know_ — Lyra had never bothered to learn any of this and now the _guilt_ ate away at her stomach. Roger had to know how much she cared for him. Had she been able to, she would have brought him back with her. Maybe his atoms and Salcilia’s atoms had travelled in the wind all the way to Oxford and they were buzzing around her like honeybees. Maybe they were listening in on her and his aunt.

Mrs. Lonsdale put her mug down next to Lyra’s. She scooted closer and wrapped an arm around Lyra.

The comfort only prompted Lyra to really begin crying. She moved closer to the comfort Mrs. Lonsdale offered her, holding her closer with that particular motherly grip Lyra could remember from Ma Costa. So different from the subtle harshness of Mrs. Coulter. They stayed like that. Mrs. Lonsdale cried too, and through tears they finished going through the contents of the basket and Lyra drank a mug and a half more of hot cocoa.

* * *

Snow didn’t arrive in time for the banquet. It was convenient for some reasons, inconvenient for others.

Lyra, at least, found it inconvenient that the landscape remained in that bleak limbo where everything was dead but with no snow to balance it out.

On Christmas Eve, for the banquet, Lyra wore a dress Mrs. Lonsdale — or Alice, as she told Lyra she could call her — gave her as an early gift after they were done going through Roger’s things. It was a little old-fashioned but Lyra liked it, anything so she didn’t have to wear something Lord Asriel had given her. Petty, sure, but Lyra was allowed such pettiness. There was a lot of baggage regarding Lord Asriel. Alice convinced her to wear some earrings and a necklace, they were a matching set made to look like pearls but if the chipping white paint was anything to go by they weren’t actually pearls. The whole ordeal of making herself look _pretty_ went smoother than it might have a year ago, when Lyra much preferred being a nuisance on purpose than cooperating with Alice. There was still a small quarrel about Lyra’s hair and then her hands, but there wasn’t too much tugging or scrubbing dirty knees with a rag.

The dining hall was picture perfect and ready for the banquet when Lyra arrived. Early, because she wanted to look at the decorations before the guests started crowding the place. A big fake white Christmas tree was placed near the far wall, decorated in blues and purples unlike the greens and reds and golds of everything else. It matched the orbs that now hung from the ceiling instead of resting inside crates.

With her barely-worn shiny shoes, Lyra figured the soles were clean enough for her to climb on the chairs and walk the length of the table… so she did. Pantalaimon didn’t chastise her for it. The butler did, though, but at least they got to the end of the table and a quarter of the way back before being interrupted.

While the Christmas Eve banquet at Jordan College was a formal affair, it wasn’t as gloomy as other big dinners. The guests could wear clothes in other colours than black, for example. The women scholars showed up in pretty dresses and furs over their shoulders to fight the winter cold. The men wore standard tuxes but their ties were of bright colours. Lyra usually sat at the same table as the Master, but this year she had been told where the women of St. Sophia’s would be sitting. Which was just a subtle way of telling her where she would be sitting this time around instead.

Lyra had no objections, really. In average, she got along better with the scholars of St. Sophia’s than with her own classmates. Might be because of all the practice she had at Jordan College, being surrounded by scholars all her life. It was a little disappointing Dame Hannah couldn’t make it to the banquet, Lyra had really grown fond of her.

When she sat down, the scholars asker for her name and when she gave it they all said things like _“ah yes!”_ and _“you are Hannah’s!”._

(Lyra had learned to let go of her bias towards being taught, and, over the course of the dinner, listened to the women talk about what classes they taught, what studies they performed. One woman, in particular, was quite young and said she had just finished her graduate studies. They listened to Lyra talk to them about alethiometry and talked about option on what she could pursue as an academic career outside of it. Lyra said she really liked drawing and the young woman said that was an _avant-garde_ career and she said it with a smie. Lyra didn't know what avant-garde meant but it sounded good, the young woman in her tophat and bright purple dress looked just like the type of person to use words like that. Though Lyra didn't know what she wanted to do outside of alethiometry, not really, but she asked about being an explorer in a questioing toe and the scholars said: _photography, journalisms, botanist._ Because that would take her around the globe in the search of new things to capture in camera, write about or study.)

There was a general pause for prayer. While Lyra knew praying to the Authority was futile, she still closed her eyes and recited the Latin prayer mechanically while thinking of all of her friends: Lee Scoresby, Mary Malone, Iorek Byrnison, Serafina Pekkala, the gyptians, Will and his mother, Roger. She just thought of them. Wished a happy Christmas to Will and Mary, in the hopes it looked something like this Christmas (but with snow). She just thought of Serafina Pekkala, the gyptians and Iorek Byrnison, a gentle reassurance on keeping them in her mind. She thought of Lee and Roger, commemorating their memory to the present as Mary had said when she opened Lyra’s eyes like the Serpent: _the present exists._

“Amen,” said the Master.

“Amen,” everyone chorused.

* * *

On the morning of December 25th, no one came to wake Lyra up. She got out of bed late in the morning so she barely had time to go down to the kitchens and pick something for breakfast before they started thinking of lunch.

Lyra sat on her bed with some leftover fruit cake from the banquet and a gingerbread girl and boy. Not the most nutritious breakfast, but it was Christmas so it didn’t matter. She finished eating before getting up again and carrying the Christmas gifts she had been given throughout the past few weeks back to the bed. It wasn’t that big of a pile but it was more than she had ever gotten before. While she was up, Lyra connected the fairy lights, leaving the window closed. The bubble of soft orange that formed inside her room with the light immediately eased her, her apparently clenched jaw unclenched and her apparently tense shoulders untensed.

Pantalaimon lifted his head from his paws, laying on the bed, and sat up straight to look. Lyra grabbed the bedsheets and wrapped them around herself.

“Which one should we open first?” Lyra asked.

“The Master and the Librarian’s,” said Pan. “We got it first.”

“No, we got Dame Hannah’s first.” But Lyra had already grabbed the square box with the blue ribbon and was untying it.

Pantalaimon moved closer, putting his paws on Lyra’s knee to see inside the box when she opened it.

Inside, was a snow globe. Lyra carefully pulled it out, mouth slightly parted in wonder. Instead of fake snow it had glitter, and in the middle of it was a polar bear standing on its hindpaws. It stared into the horizon as if scouring the land or watching the sunrise, waiting for the tides to change on the ocean to swin. There was nothing about it that indicated it was an armoured bear but Lyra chose to believe it was so. She shook it and made the glitter go everywhere.

“There is something underneath it,” said Pantalaimon.

Lyra tilted it carefully and, indeed, there was a long oval dial. Lyra turned it and when she strung it good, _O Holy Night_ began to play and the armoured bear began to spin.

She smiled.

Still with the utmost care, Lyra stood to put the snow globe on her desk. She waited until _O Holy Night_ was done playing before flipping the small radio on. She searched for a Christmas carols station and, once she found one, settled back in the nest she had done with her pillow and bedsheets around the other gifts.

Dame Hannah’s gift had come in a package along with her letter. There was a note on the package that read: _open on Christmas day._ Lyra ripped paper and found a purse inside. It was made of leather and decorated in embroidery of bright colours. Why did Dame Hannah think she would need a purse? Lyra just used her new schoolbag to carry everything. When she noticed the square shape she realised it was supposed to be for the alethiometer. It was bound with velvet inside to keep it safe.

When Lyra put it to the side with a smile, Pantalaimon moved the flap aside to stick his head inside. Lyra giggled. He claimed it was very soft.

Right after the banquet, Professor Malcolm Polstead had stopped Lyra before she headed back to her room. He’d handed her a little gift. It turned out to be a chocolatl bar with colourful sprinkles. He’d written a _Happy Christmas!_ on a piece of paper he put over the chocolatl wrapper. Lyra ripped it open to nibble on a square piece, snapping another she gave to Pantalaimon to eat as well.

Just this morning Lyra had found a new gift. She could only assume it came from the witches because it was very much not something any other adult would give to a child. A dagger made of bone inside a beautifully crafted leather cosy for safe-keeping. There was no note or anything, but Lyra somehow _knew_ it came straight from Serafina Pekkala. The handle was made of a silvery wood and it was so sharp that even carefully gracing her finger over the sharp end got her a paper-thin cut.

“We’re gonna have to be careful with that one,” said Pantalaimon.

Lyra stood up again and put all the gifts on her desk. She grabbed some new doodles she had been working on here and there and the roll of tape she kept in the drawer, crawling back to the bed but kneeling this time to put the doodles on the wall. Lyra had accepted she wasn’t one for realism and instead her drawings turned out better when she was intentionally goofy or cute about them. There was one of Lee and Hester. One of Iorek Byrnison she tried very hard to make look intimidating, but it ended up as an adorable bear with angry-looking eyebrows. Serafina Pekkala and Kaisa. To Mary’s drawing she had included her alpine chough-dæmon. Will and Kirjava, to which she added a little heart on the corner. Roger and Salcilia also got hearts, Lyra wasn’t entirely happy with that one… but at least they were both smiling.

Flopping down so her feet were on the pillow, Lyra rolled over to hug Pantalaimon as he padded to lay next to her. She held him a lot since the Land of the Dead, sometimes it caught her off-guard how _scared_ she was of being separated of him again. Pantalaimon seemed hesitant at times, but he always pressed his head underneath her chin and relaxed when Lyra buried her nose into his fur.

The little radio was still playing Christmas carols and the room was still softly illuminated by fairy lights.

Lyra whimpered and began to cry. Pantalaimon said nothing and did nothing, he just let Lyra hold him tighter and cry. Occasionally licking her cheek for added comfort but just being close to each other was enough. Lyra spent so much time alone now because sometimes this happened: she started to cry, and she didn’t want anyone around when it happened. Alice had been an exception because she had _known_ Roger as well. She looked up at drawings, blinking the tears from her eyes but never ceasing to shed them.

* * *

“No appetite, Lyra?” asked Ma Costa.

It was December 26th. Lyra had decided on a whim that she wanted to go see the Oxford gyptians instead of being cooped in her room learning the meaning of alethiometer symbols. The little Costa boathouse was a big mismatch of decorations with fairy lights of different types and colours, garlands that weren’t long enough to cover one whole wall, smiling snowmen hanging from the handles of cupboards, a little plastic Christmas tree on a corner where it was less likely to be the cause of someone tripping. It was _cosy._ Not grand like Jordan College or personal like Lyra’s room, just _cosy._

Lyra sat with Ma Costa and Tony Costa at the little table. Jal, Ma Costa’s goshawk, perched on the cold stove across the cramped kitchen space while Lyuba, Tony’s hawk-dæmon, was on his shoulder. Lyra noticed that she was careful to perch her talons only through the jumper and not the actual shoulder.

“Or is it that you don’t like my food?” Ma Costa smiled.

“No, I love your food,” said Lyra. “I’m just… not hungry.”

Pantalaimon was on her lap, curled up into a ball.

“You alright?” asked Tony.

“Christmas wasn’t fun,” said Lyra, stirring the meat and potatoes broth around with her spoon. “I miss Roger.”

She left it at that, not wanting to elaborate because there would be a lot of explaining to do. There were layers to why she was so down. Layers that included more than Roger. There was Will, the Land of the Dead, her parents, being separated from Pantalaimon.

“The boy you wanted to rescue,” said Ma Costa.

Lyra nodded.

Now that she thought about it, Lyra wasn't sure she'd told anyone what happened at the mountain peak when the bridge to another world opened. All that was certain was that, when the gyptians found Lyra again, she was alone. Well, not alone-alone because Mary and Will were with her but last she had seen the gyptians Roger and Lee Scoresby were with her and they no longer were when they saw her again.

“Christmas is a rough time to miss someone,” said Ma Costa. “We really miss Billy too and—” When she faltered and choked up, Tony quickly grabbed her hand. Ma Costa smiled at him. “— and it has been hard, adjusting. It’s a process, Lyra."

Lyra gave a silent nod, continuing to stir the broth. She drank some of it and said nothing.

Ma Costa dried her tears and instead chose to tell a few funny stories from her youth set around Christmas time, some of which included stealing and others that included falling into the freezing canal. She even told some stories regarding Tony, to which he tried to object to while red-faced. Lyra didn’t think they were so bad he wouldn’t want his ma to tell them, if anything she thought it was sweet. Soon, there were smiles. It wasn’t completely happy but, like everything else in the boathouse, it was _cosy._ Comforting, in a way. How Ma Costa treated Lyra the way she thought real mothers did. She asked Lyra a few times if she was finishing her broth, which she ended up doing despite not really being hungry. Afterwards, Lyra offered to do the dishes. Ma Costa told her not to leave just yet because she had decided to do some dessert.

Because it was winter, it already looked like it was nearing dusk outside despite them only just having lunch. Lyra walked out to sit on the bow. Jal followed her out and perched on the roof of the boathouse, the minimal distance between the outside and inside making it okay for him to not be inside with Ma Costa. Pantalaimon hopped to stand on the railing. Lyra stood back up to catch him in case he slipped, he couldn’t turn into a bird anymore to avoid falling into the canal.

“Lyra.”

She turned around, one hand secure on Pantalaimon’s back. Tony Costa walked over to her, Lyuba on his armguard this time. She flapped her wings to perch on the railing next to Pantalaimon.

“Dessert’s ready?” Lyra asked.

“Not yet,” said Tony. “Ma’s gotta heat up the oven again to make it, so it’ll be a few minutes.”

Lyra nodded.

“She told me to tell you,” said Tony, abruptly interrupting the silence that fell between them and making Pantalaimon’s ears perk. “That if you want to spend Christmas with us next year that you’re welcome. It was always three of us on Christmas and I could see it really got to her when she only served two plates of dinner. There is some fun gyptian Christmas traditions we do down by the Jericho you might enjoy."

“So, I’m replacing Billy?”

“No, I didn’t—”

“Kidding,” said Lyra, but she knew the joke fell flat. She did idle fidgeting and rocked herself on the balls and heels of her feet, grabbing and letting go of the railing. “I think I’d want to spend Christmas here, beats being alone in my room.”

She was sure Alice would have had her over for Christmas had she asked, or even the Master and the Librarian if only for some tea. Lyra had isolated herself on purpose. Alone with her grief and her dæmon. Other than Alice, there was no one better to understand the process of mourning she was going through than the Costas. Lyra had one odd family with a bear and a witch and friends in another world and people in her own world who weren't related to her… but she liked her family. She liked the real _feeling_ of it that came from when she first stayed with the Costas and she did that flour trick on the gas of the stove.

Pantalaimon suddenly stood on two legs and Lyra hurried to get a better hold of him.

“Look!” he said.

Lyra looked, it took her a moment but then she saw it… snow. Finally, it snowed.

Lyuba took flight and, from the slight flinch Tony gave, tugged on the very end of the bond with how high she went. She flew back down quickly and Tony caught her on the armguard, Lyuba’s feathers were covered in snowflakes. If hawks could smile, then Lyuba was doing it. Same with pine-martens and Panatalaimon.

So, Lyra smiled too. She smiled at Pantalaimon as he crawled to press against her chest and she smiled at Tony next to her. He smiled back, nudged her with the elbow of the same arm holding Lyuba. They stayed outside and braced the cold snow until Ma Costa called them back inside for dessert.


End file.
